


worn by the weather and the waves

by ships_to_sail



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Angst, CHECK YOUR TAGS, Character Death, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE, M/M, Songfic, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-16
Updated: 2018-03-16
Packaged: 2019-04-01 05:17:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13991259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ships_to_sail/pseuds/ships_to_sail
Summary: Once upon a time, there was a man made of liquid gold and late summer’s evening heat, who lived all alone on a small island in the middle of the ocean. There were neighboring islands, of course, close enough that he managed to keep himself in the few creature comforts he desired, but not close enough to be glimpsed from the gently swaying hammock he sat in every night to watch the ocean eat the sun.He had lived on the island his entire life, at the bottom of a lighthouse he diligently tended. He was a man of the island, born and raised to love the soil beneath his feet, the people born of it’s mountains and lakes and streams. It was his job to keep the lighthouse alight, to make sure that the sailors on the seas knew where they were, where he was, to beware the rocky outcroppings that littered the shore like teeth.





	worn by the weather and the waves

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE FRIENDS CHECK YOUR TAGS, BEWARE YE THAT ENTER HERE this shit is sad
> 
> Based on ["The Lighthouse's Tale" by Nickle Creek](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARIr6S_0lAQ), my go-to spring weather transition song, which probably tells you something.
> 
> After some Real Life Shit that's gone down recently, I needed a place to channel a bit of that, so that's what this is. The style isn't my usual, and the subject matter is the saddest of sads, but damn I love this song and I'm really invested in what this little thing became.
> 
> Entirely unbeta'd, and entirely my fault. If you recognize it, it's definitely not mine.
> 
> Tip jar always open for extra kudos/comments you've got jingling around in your pockets.

_“I am a lighthouse, worn by the weather and the waves/I keep my lamp lit, to warn the sailors on their way/I'll tell a story, paint you a picture from my past/I was so happy, but joy in this life seldom lasts”_  
*  
Once upon a time, there was a man made of liquid gold and late summer’s evening heat, who lived all alone on a small island in the middle of the ocean. There were neighboring islands, of course, close enough that he managed to keep himself in the few creature comforts he desired, but not close enough to be glimpsed from the gently swaying hammock he sat in every night to watch the ocean eat the sun.

He had lived on the island his entire life, at the bottom of a lighthouse he diligently tended. He was a man of the island, born and raised to love the soil beneath his feet, the people born of it’s mountains and lakes and streams. It was his job to keep the lighthouse alight, to make sure that the sailors on the seas knew where they were, where he was, to beware the rocky outcroppings that littered the shore like teeth.

The keeper’s life was a small one, but he didn’t mind. He had a handful of well-mended, finely tailored shirts, two crystal bottles of the finest scotch on any ship, and a shelf full of books full of worlds and words and wonders that were his at the ready. He passed his days reading, walking, speaking to those around his town, the passers-through of his existence who left shadows but no substance. All he had, his closest friend in the world, was the lighthouse.

It had been there long before him, and would be there long after him. But when he diligently scrubbed the outer walls with a mixture of vinegar and lemon juice, he would press his hands into the mortar between the stones and feel the weight of all that it had seen, all the lives it had saved - and failed to save. He swept the cement floor, removed his rugs and hung them on the low branches of nearby trees so they could soak up the scent of the island winds. He patched chips in the stones of the stairs, kept the gears of the spotlight oiled and clean. And through it all he sang, or hummed, or spoke out loud to the empty space around him. He built himself a life in one-sided conversations.

And then, one day, the prince arrived.

He wasn’t really a prince, just a weary traveller moving from island to island in search of the place he could finally bury his roots. But when the keeper laid eyes on his golden hair, made wavy by the spray of ocean salt, and his blue eyes the color of every storm he’d ever seen rock the seas, there was no earthly word he could find to better suit him. The man was a prince, a sunbeam made flesh, and with his first words, the sharps and flats of the way his people spoke nudged at a familiarity buried deep inside the keeper.

He needed a shower, and a shave - his time at sea having spawned an atrocious moustache - but all of those things the lighthouse could help provide, and when he stepped still dripping from the shower he found a worn white cotton shirt and soft tan pants waiting for him. He took them, with gratitude, and without waiting to be invited or dismissed, he began to cook.

The prince danced around the kitchen and the keeper watched, mesmerized by this strangely wonderful man who turned scarcity and blandness into consumable art. They ate by the firelight, the windows open and the fan spinning lazily overhead. When their plates were empty and their fingers laced together, spanning the distance between their chairs, the keeper spoke and the prince spoke back.

Eventually, their words ran out and the rim of the world was bleeding pink into purple, they went to bed together, the salt of their bodies buffered by the breeze off the ocean. They melded and mixed their limbs together in a swirl of caramel and vanilla until it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. And by the time the sun was fully risen, they collapsed next to each other, hands entwined and hearts slowing as they slipped into sleep, the taste of each other still dusted on their lips like sugar.

Their second night passed much the same as their first, as did the third, fourth, and hundred nights after that.

Their days varied. Many were lost to the water, trailing lazy fingers through cresting waves and trawling tidepools for dinner; others were spent in town, shadowed hours in dusty bookshops and under awnings in the late afternoon sun, picking out new flavors and textures from the local farmers.

Very, very rarely, their days were lost to the rain. To the pounding, lashing storms that rose from nowhere to batter against the island until the bedrock itself begged for mercy. On these days, the keeper paced back and forth along the balcony of the lighthouse, drinking for warmth and compulsively checking his cache of supplies. The prince, in lacking practical ways to help, dropped to his knees in prayer. He was learning from the keeper, lurking like a shadow while his quick mind absorbed as many details as he could. But he was still more of a hindrance than a help, and he ached because of it.

Even those days would pass, however, breaking clear and cold the next day as the world strove to erase what happened. Together they would stroll up and down the shore, picking out pieces of the wreckage and doing their best to return it them to homes, owners, or final resting places. It was slow work, and painful, but ultimately full of good. It was the keepers purpose, and the prince simply strove to help him fill it.

That's how the years passed, all their days just slightly different and all their nights the same. They would lie together and watch the stars wink out, volleying questions back and forth like rockets.

“Johnny Cash or Elvis Presley?”

“If you could only see one color for the rest of your life, what would it be?”

“Do you wanna tell me why you cry at night when you think the world's asleep?”

Because try as he might, the prince couldn't quite keep the tears at bay. He missed his home, and even more he missed his family, his bevy of sisters and a mother made of steel and silk. He wanted to see them, desperately and dearly, and still time passed.

And then the day came for the prince and the keeper to wed. It had been close to a decade, years and memories stacked on top of each other. The keeper had asked, ready to slot the final piece into the puzzle of their lives, and the prince hadn't thought to say anything but yes. The rings were made of sun bleached coral, and an invitations went out to everyone on the island.

“I want them there, and she won't come without my father.” The same father who died before he left home and left him nothing but his name and the vaguest outlines of fond memories. “Please. Don't you see I have to go?”

Of course the keeper saw. And who was he to grant or deny permission to anyone? But he would miss the prince so much, and he was unaccustomed to having to miss people. Still, he nodded solemnly and pressed a kiss to the middle of the prince's forehead.

“Of course I see. Go. Bring them here. I want the whole world here to see us.”

“You are my whole world.”

“Your world can't be whole with half your heart across the ocean.”

“Not my whole heart. Maybe a third of it…” and the matter was put to rest with laughter and a kiss.

The day the prince departed dawned bright, and clear, with a cool wind off the south shore and not a cloud to be seen other than the ones haunting the keepers heart.

He could feel them as he walked, shading his steps and weighing down his heart. The prince couldn't see them, but he could feel them, and he squeezed the keepers hand tighter as they strolled nearer and nearer to the departing ship.

“I love you.”

“And I love you. Don't go?” He was weak.

“Don't ask me that.”

“You are a creature of beauty, and of light, and of all the brightness in the world. You are the best thing in my life, you know that, right?”

“And you're the rumble of thunder in the distance. Dark and worrisome but with the constant promise of life giving rain. I'll be back before you know I'm gone.”

The sheer impossibility of that fact threatened to bowl him over, and he wrapped the prince in a fierce embrace before his knees gave way.

The prince kissed him, deeply and slowly, an attempt to make up for all the nights he'd miss while he was away. The waves crashed around them, the sand slipped out to sea, and still they stood pressed together, lips and hands and sun warmed expanse of muscle beneath fingertips. In a time both longer than history and over in a blink, they parted. The keeper retreated, refusing to look back, as the boat pushed off from the dock and made for open sea.

Slowly, the keeper made his way home. He stood in the doorway and felt unglued by the silence, as though he'd stepped backwards in time to a life he no longer fit in. He ran his hands along the stone walls, the weight and solidity of their home reassuring him.

He crossed the too empty space and poured himself three fingers of scotch, grabbing the bottle in his other hand and making his way slowly up the winding steps to the top of the lighthouse. He settled into the low wooden chair and watched as the prince’s ship sank against the horizon, a black dot quickly washed out by the blood orange sun behind it. A breeze stirred, warm and heavy, and the keeper shivered.

After the third drink, he stopped bothering with the glass and just drank straight from the bottle until that, too, was empty.

It was the smell that woke him up first. It smelled metallic, like blood and electricity danced on the wind together. He was still sitting in the chair, bottle broken on the floor beneath his hand, and before he knew what was happening he was on his feet. He ran his hands over his eyes as his mind prayed and his heart sank.

Outside the windows of the balcony, a storm raged.

Lightening split the sky and thunder rumbled close enough he feared it, like the growl of an animal he’d thought long since vanquished. The waves were terrible, black as ink and crossing each others’ path with a violent intensity that he could feel from land. His first immediate thought was to get the light up, to brighten the beacon for any hopeless, hapless sailors caught in the squall.

And that was when he remembered.  
Those nameless sailors carried one very important, named piece of cargo among them.

His heart froze. Every muscle in his body stopped. He looked to see, and in the flash of the next lightning bolt, he watched his entire world come apart.

They hadn’t gotten away far enough, fast enough. The cornflower blue flags of the prince’s home port, tattered and invisible through the wall of rain, and yet he knew them because he’d made them. Sewn every last stitch, planning the voyages and vistas they would see beneath the fabrics embellishments. He could still feel the rough homespun as it slipped through his hands, as they folded them together and packed them for the harbormaster.

And there they were, swallowed whole by the dark and depths of a pitch black sea.

With every flash of light, the ship drifted closer to the rocks, and in each lull of darkness, the keeper prayed. Prayed for absolution, to a god who would not hear and would not come.

When the ship hit the rocks, he couldn’t hear it over the squall of stormwind, but he could feel it. It was the shredding of his heart, the breaking of every bone in his body. He crashed to his knees and revelled in the focused pain. He screamed into the wind until he spat blood, pulled at his hair until his head ached and he couldn’t see through the mixture of tears and rainwater.

And still, he watched. Watched the storm subsided and dawn broke, thin and silver on the horizon. Watched the pieces of the prince’s ship floated to shore like a maritime graveyard. And he knew that the prince was among them.

When he found him, it was such that the keeper thought he might just be sleeping. If it weren’t for the grey to his skin, the fact that his constantly grinning face was twisted in an approximation of pain, it might have been possible not to face it. But there he was, his body pushed by wind and rain and an angry twist of fate in to the first cove, their favorite cove. He was surrounded by broken pieces of wood, twisted shreds of metal and cloth and even an undamaged case of wine, the finest red, intended for his mother.

The keeper cradled him against his chest and kissed him gently, pressing his lips to the same spot on the man’s forehead that, just a day ago, had been warm and windkissed and tasted faintly of juniper. Now the only taste there was salt.

As the daylight faded, the keeper dug in the soft dirt where the sand began to shift to soil, his hands and back aching in a way that only amplified the hollow ache in his chest. He laid the prince at the bottom of the hole, and his hands shook uncontrollably. His chest heaved, and the sobs that escaped his body seemed to take form and sit graveside with him. He clutched the prince to his chest, rocking back and forth as he whispered nonsense words, the outline of a future that would never now be. He cried, and he talked, and no one spoke back and the keeper felt an emptiness that plunged through him and in to the core of the earth itself.

When the sun slipped below the horizon, ending the first day he’d spent alone since the prince washed up on his stretch of beach, he said the only goodbye he could think of and forced himself to turn and leave the prince in the dark. But not before he made a promise.

A promise to walk. A promise to open the heavy oak doors and light every candle in their home, to fill the tower with real and artificial light as night fell and the seas were as calm as ever.

A promise that they would see each other soon.

And the lighthouse stood, as it always had and always would, as the keeper took three deep breaths.

Ran.

Jumped.

And joined the prince to rule forever in a kingdom of rocks and waves.

*

_“And the waves crashing around me, the sand slips out to sea/And the winds that blow remind me/Of what has been, and what can never be"_

 


End file.
